Kenya's child shepherds tend their books by night

In the pastoralist culture of the Masai, there is no greater honor for a child than to become a shepherd.

"We look around the family, decide who are the brightest children with the most potential ... and send them off with the goats," says Morintat Lowara, tugging on his elongated, decorated earlobes with one hand and proudly patting his shepherd son Boscow on the head with the other. "You need to be intelligent to be a shepherd because of cattle rustlers and wild animals, and because it's never simple to find water holes and grazing pastures," he says. "School is for those who can't succeed in looking after the animals."

Six of the Lowaras' children go to school, while two tend the goats and a cow.

But for the young Masai herders in the scorching Rift Valley, times are changing: A night school for shepherds is making it possible to learn the three Rs without abandoning familial duties.

The idea was conceived four years ago by a group of young, educated, Masai who formed a non-governmental organization (NGO) that they called Osiligi, which means "hope" in the Masai language.

"My brother was a shepherd," says Simon Ole Kaparo, Osiligi's program manager, "and I was envious of him. I got sent to school, and I felt like I had no prospects."

Now, says Mr. Kaparo, he thinks differently. "We realized our community has a lot of problems, foremost among them that our brothers and sisters cannot read or write. And we knew that if we, as the educated youth, did not do something for the community, we would all be left behind."

The program has "graduated" (up until fourth grade) 400 shepherds and has become a model for a similar project created by the Samburu tribe for their shepherds in Kenya's Baragoi district. The Atlanta-based NGO Care, which funds the Osiligi shepherds' night and summer schools, has recently helped create similar projects in Mali and Ethiopia. And the Kenyan ministry of education has included members of Osiligi in several forums on informal education, where the possibility of adapting aspects of the program for other communities - such as street children in the cities - was discussed.

The shepherd school program works on a shift concept, with the "regular" school children relieving their shepherd siblings in the late afternoons, and allowing them to go take their places on the classroom benches. Thus, after a morning of herding, the shepherds pass along their clubs and knives, sling their handmade school bags around their shoulders, strap on their rubber-tire-strips sandals, and trek off for an evening of ABCs under the weak beam of kerosene lamps.

During the breaks, when the regular school children are home for weeks on end, the shepherds, who range in age from 7 to 16, go in for intensive summer-school training.

The dozen teachers at shepherds night school are themselves shepherds, busy - as are their charges - with the animals during the days, and roving, with the classrooms and the students, in coordination with the migrations of the shepherds and in tune with the seasons.

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